Dt 6:4-9
14 June 2009
“Listen”
At the May presbytery meeting, part of our executive presbyter’s report dealt with her reflections on what she called “thriving” congregations. She talked about discussions she’d had with various people, and she mentioned three things she labeled “ABC.” This “ABC” stands for three things that thriving churches understand do not enable them to thrive.
The first one, A, is attendance. Thriving churches, she said, don’t get worked up by focusing on attendance. The next one, B, stands for the building. The building does not a thriving church make. And the third one, C, is one we tend to get a little crazy about. C stands for cash. She said that thriving churches realize that it’s not all about money.
So if ABC represents things that thriving churches are not focused on, what does? What she did speak about was hospitality. This isn’t the hospitality that offers coffee and tea to guests. (Though I suppose it would at least do that.) No, this is hospitality as a spiritual quality: hospitality as a lifestyle. When churches focus on hospitality, that other stuff—care for attendance, the building, and cash—that other stuff follows.
It’s the hospitality that St. Benedict wrote about in the sixth century. In the Rule of Benedict, his guideline for monastic life, we read, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Mt 25:35).’”[1] Welcoming guests as Christ: that would put the creators of evangelism programs out of business. That kind of hospitality is a spiritual practice, and it takes continued effort. I’m still working on it!
This is the first of a sermon series in which I won’t necessarily use the terminology of “thriving” churches. Instead, I’ll speak about cultivating, or fostering, Christian community. Hospitality, which is something that weaves itself into all of life, is essential to Christian community. It doesn’t exist without it. But today, as you probably guessed from my sermon title, I want to especially focus on listening.
“Listening!” you say. That seems simple enough! Still, I think we know the difference between being aware that someone’s talking and really hearing, really paying attention. Jesus clearly understands the difference. One of his most common instructions is to listen. In our gospel reading, the parable of the sower of the seed, Jesus brackets his story with that very instruction (Mk 4:3-9). “Listen!” he begins, and he finishes by saying, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” (vv. 3, 9).
St. Benedict, who
I mentioned a moment ago, begins his Rule
on the same note: listen. “Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with
the ear of your heart. This is advice
from one who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to
God from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience.”[2]
Our Old Testament reading is the
key statement of faith in the Hebrew Bible.
It’s known as the Shema. “Hear”
or “listen” is what the Hebrew word Shema means. It begins with the famous call: “Hear, O Israel” (v. 4).
You may have noticed that, in
our pew Bibles, the passage doesn’t begin that way. Let me tell you a quick story about that.
When Banu and I were at seminary, we had an Old Testament professor who told us about a question he’s frequently asked. The question is, “Which version of the Bible do you think is the best?” He said his answer would be, “It depends on what verse you’re talking about.”
That wasn’t his way of dodging the question. He was making the point that no single translation is the best in every case. You’ve heard the phrase, “It gets lost in the translation”? Any English Bible (or Spanish or Japanese or whatever) can be guilty of that. So here’s a case in point: the Good News Bible, which begins, “Israel, remember this!”
That this passage has been so central to Jewish life for millennia is proved by Jesus himself. In Mark 12, when asked by one of the scribes, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answers as any good Jew would. “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (vv. 28-30).
The addition Jesus makes is to link the Shema with “love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 31). Linking that to today’s message means that we cannot listen to God without listening to our neighbor, without listening to each other. Our society does a terrible job at training us to listen. Airing our opinions at high decibels? Yes. Taking the time to actually hear the other person? Not so much.
Thomas Hawkins, in his little jewel of a book, Cultivating Christian Community, speaks of barriers to listening.[3] One of them deals with how our bodies are made. Calling it the “speech-thought-time differential,” he refers to the fact that our thoughts flow much faster than we can speak.[4] While somebody else is talking, our minds are racing. We may be thinking, “I already know where this is going!” We become distracted; our minds wander. We experience the condition that many of you have at this very moment!
Another barrier to listening is our tendency to filter, to screen, what we hear. This could be an emotional filter. Maybe there’s been some traumatic experience that colors the way we perceive things. The experience need not be something negative. It’s also possible for an extremely joyous event to alter the way we listen.
There are other filters to what we hear. It could be a matter of personality. We can make preconceptions based on who’s doing the talking. And again, that can be for the better or worse. There are many other filters that serve as barriers to listening: cultural, political, religious, you name it. We humans are very good at coming up with ways to make assumptions about each other.
Our friend Thomas Hawkins says, “Probably the most common barrier to listening is emotional reactivity.”[5] This is when we hear something that inspires in us feelings of fear and anger. These are red flag issues. We become defensive and maybe even lash out. Some people call these reactions thinking with the reptilian part of the brain. Reptiles are not very good at higher reasoning!
It’s important to be aware of this within ourselves. There was an incident—again, when Banu and I were at seminary—after I came home from the hospital following my brain surgery. We lived on campus, and Banu and a couple of our friends were downstairs in the lobby, decorating for Christmas. There was a decoration that they wanted to place up high, and apparently they felt like they couldn’t stand on a chair and do it themselves!
I should say this: I had a prescription for a steroid to prevent swelling of the brain. Something steroids have a tendency to do is to hinder emotional control. (At least, the one I was taking sure did!)
So Banu came upstairs and interrupted me while I was watching Star Trek. When we arrived downstairs in the lobby, our very good friend joked to me about needing my help. I guess that was it; she could tell that I was upset. I hung the decoration, mumbled something, and went back upstairs.
It wasn’t long before I realized that I really had no reason to get mad. So I groveled and apologized to our friend. I mentioned my steroid use and its effect on my usual cool-as-a-cucumber demeanor. I will never forget her response. “Well, now you know what PMS feels like!” Needless to say, while I was messing around with that decoration, I was experiencing a pretty significant barrier to listening!
I’ve given some examples of things that hinder us from hearing each other. They hinder us from hearing God. I think they can be described as, for lack of a better term, somewhat dramatic examples. But for most of us, most of the time, barriers to listening are more commonplace.
How do we listen to each other here? What are some ways in which we do not listen? How have past experiences with certain individuals hampered our willingness to listen? What are some ways in which we’re unwilling to give someone a chance?
Hawkins describes listening as a form of “self-denial for the sake of some greater spiritual good or purpose. Listening is hard because it involves a loss of control. When we listen, we become a servant to others. We forget ourselves and our agenda in order to be fully present to the other person…Listening requires us to give up being the center of our little world.”[6] Really listening—really paying attention—may require swallowing our foolish pride.
We’re reminded that “the Christian life has a new focus of relationship in Jesus Christ. With Christ as the third party in every relationship, we can listen openly and graciously to others…Whenever and wherever listening happens, grace breaks into our midst. We experience the mystery of spiritual communion.”[7] That’s a wonderful dimension that we too easily lose sight of.
I don’t think it’s accidental that listening is at the heart of the Shema, the greatest commandment of all. “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (vv. 6-7).
In all of our relationships, Christ is present. Listening is one aspect of hospitality. Remember that the call of our God, the call of our Lord Jesus Christ, is this: listen.